iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michael Christofides

pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 22/07/2026

The upcoming Postgres 19 is set to include extra EXPLAIN info in several places: 🚦 An "IO" parameter (async info) 💡 Generated and supplied hint info (pg_plan_advice) ♻️ Memoize estimate fields 🪵 WAL full page image bytes We've added support for them all in @pgmustard.com 🎉

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 30/04/2026

Nice to see that JIT will now be off by default from Postgres 19: git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=po...

git.postgresql.org

git.postgresql.org Git - postgresql.git/commitdiff

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 19/02/2026

pgMustard Pro now includes 1,000 API credits 🎉 Bulk-analyse plans, plug into your LLM workflows, or build something we haven't thought of yet. Docs: pgmustard.com/docs#api

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 13/02/2026

New blog post: Read efficiency issues in Postgres queries If you've got a query that's slowly degrading in performance, you might have a read efficiency issue. The root cause could be table bloat, index bloat, or data locality degradation. www.pgmustard.com/blog/read-ef...

pgmustard.com

Read efficiency issues in Postgres queries - pgMustard

A lot of the time in database land, our queries are I/O constrained. As such, performance work often involves reducing the number of page reads. Indexes are a prime example, but they don’t solve every...

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Kate McKean @katemckean.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 20/01/2026

Our Read Efficiency tips are now more efficient to read! 📝 Better wording, mostly for clarity 🔬 More specific to the scan type, and therefore shorter in most cases 🌟 Improved scoring, especially for Bitmap Heap Scans More details: www.pgmustard.com/changelog

A screenshot of two pgMustard windows, with an example query plan in each, and an arrow pointing from the old version to the new. Each has a Bitmap Heap Scan highlighted, and the Read Efficiency tip expanded.

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 24/11/2025

We've revamped our "Operation on Disk" tips ✨ * Made them clearer * Made them more succinct (in most cases) * Improved the scoring * Mention hash_mem_multiplier (when relevant) * Show "Operation in Memory" in more cases, with the memory used * Updated the linked blog post

A side my side comparison highlighting mostly how much more succinct a new version of the tip can be. The tip wording of the new version is as follows:

This operation wrote out to disk to store temporary data.

Disk space used: 282 MB

Reducing the size of the operation would make it faster, especially if you can get it to fit into working memory.

You can do this by reducing the number of rows, with a LIMIT clause, or reducing the size of each row, by operating on fewer columns.

Another option is to increase the memory available, by adjusting work_mem.

Learn more about working memory (underlined, as it's a link)

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incident.io @incident.io · 17/11/2025

Big performance problems 🤝 tiny CS tricks Our latest blog breaks down how bloom filters helped us take an API from 5s to 0.3s - even with millions of alerts in play. If you’re fighting slow queries or Postgres under pressure, this one’s worth a look: go.incident.io/r9jgcI9

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Nik Samokhvalov @samokhvalov.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Today is the day -- end-of-life for Postgres 13 www.postgresql.org/support/vers...

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Ben @benjdd.com · 04/11/2025

Explain is a powerful tool in Postgres. If you care about performance, get comfortable running `explain` and `explain analyze` commands regularly, and learn how to interpret its output. This blog is a great intro. www.depesz.com/2013/04/16/e...

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JP Camara @jpcamara.com · 12/11/2025

I'm not sure @ankane.bsky.social is human - maybe some kind of open source being from the future 😂 I said to a colleague - "we'll see, but it's ankane, so it's entirely possible it'll get done soon". Less than an hour later, it was updated 🤯

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 10/11/2025

New blog post: "What do the new Index Searches lines in EXPLAIN mean?" In Postgres 18 you'll start seeing things like "Index Searches: 1" on each of your index scans. We looked into what they mean, and how that information can be helpful. www.pgmustard.com/blog/what-do...

pgmustard.com

What do the new Index Searches lines in EXPLAIN mean? - pgMustard

In Postgres 18 you’ll now see “Index Searches” lines in EXPLAIN ANALYZE output. If like me you were wondering what those mean exactly, you’re in the right place.

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Benedikt Deicke @benediktdeicke.com · 28/08/2025

Sometimes the trick to optimizing database queries is simple: Don't do stupid stuff.

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 20/08/2025

The upcoming Postgres 18 is set to include some nice improvements to EXPLAIN: * BUFFERS on by default with ANALYZE 🎉 * Fractional "actual rows" (huge in some cases) * Quite a few new fields (including the very cool Index Searches) We've now added support for all of them. 💛

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GSM @turnstep.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Amazing post on making Postgres slower (yes, slower!) on purpose. byteofdev.com/posts/making... #postgres #postgresql Favorite bit: "random_page_cost = 1e300" LOL! Well done

byteofdev.com

Making Postgres 42,000x slower because I am unemployed

As an respectable unemployed person must do, I tried to make Postgres as slow as possible

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Nik Samokhvalov @samokhvalov.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Really non-trivial case with MultiXacts and brilliant RCA and level of transparency from the Metronome team – great example of what to do with new types of #PostgreSQL incidents! enjoyed discussion a lot! www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KoP...

youtube.com

MultiXact member space exhaustion | Postgres.FM 151 | #PostgreSQL #Postgres podcast

YouTube video by PostgresTV

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Nik Samokhvalov @samokhvalov.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

PostgresFM with Sugu, co-creator of Vitess, originally created to shard MySQL in YouTube, and then used by GitHub, Pinterest, Slack, Shopify, etc. Discussed his work at Supabase on Multigres, sharding for PostgreSQL. Enjoyed a lot!! Take it to a long hike or drive: youtu.be/KOepJivmWTg?...

youtu.be

Multigres | Postgres.FM 150 | #PostgreSQL #Postgres podcast

YouTube video by PostgresTV

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Nik Samokhvalov @samokhvalov.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

3 years of PostgresFM 🥳 And now, @michristofides.com being back from 2-week break, and we've recorded our 150th episode A very interesting one, don't miss -- this Friday

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Elizabeth Garrett Christensen @sqlliz.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Postgres Meetup for All tomorrow www.meetup.com/postgres-mee...

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Nik Samokhvalov @samokhvalov.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Amazing talk by Alexander Kukushkin about caveats and myths and truths of sync replication in Postgres. Everyone who works or plans to work with sync replication must watch it! www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFn9...

youtube.com

Myths and Truths about Synchronous Replication in PostgreSQL | POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025

YouTube video by Microsoft Developer

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 18/06/2025

There are a couple of online #PostgreSQL events today that look like they'll be great: 16:00 UTC — 10 Costly Database Performance Mistakes (and How to Fix Them) with Andy Atkinson www.meetup.com/postgres-mee... 19:00 UTC — 12 years of Postgres Weekly with Peter Cooper aka.ms/TalkingPostg...

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pgMustard @pgmustard.com · 18/06/2025

Hello, Bluesky!

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Jimmy Angelakos @vyruss.org · 12/06/2025

I have the great pleasure to announce the release of PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them in all formats! 🎉 To celebrate, @manningbooks.bsky.social is offering a Deal of the Day: 45% off my book and other selected titles! 👉 mng.bz/WrEx #PostgreSQL #Postgres #TechBooks #Database #OpenSource

mng.bz

Deal of the Day

Manning is an independent publisher of computer books, videos, and courses.

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 07/05/2025

Next week (14th) I'll be joining the excellent Postgres Meetup for All to demo and discuss troubleshooting slow queries using EXPLAIN and external tools: www.meetup.com/postgres-mee... If you or your team could do with an intro or refresher, it would be great to see you there!

meetup.com

Postgres Meetup for All | Meetup

Calling all Postgres enthusiasts! Do you work with Postgres? Do you want to be more involved in the community? Share your learnings? Join our vibrant online community dedicated to PostgreSQL, the worl...

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Reposted by Michael Christofides

Brent Ozar @brento.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I'm proud to announce that I'm teaching a 1-day Postgres performance tuning class at the PASS Summit this year! Registration is open now, and if you register before May 13, you save big with early bird rates. passdatacommunitysummit.com/sessions/1103

passdatacommunitysummit.com

All sessions - PASS Data Community Summit

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 07/04/2025

Proud to be sponsoring PGDay UK. It’s lovely having a local event and it’s been great each time I’ve attended. It’ll be in London again on September 9th. Let me know if you’ll be there too! P.s. they’re currently looking for speakers (and sponsors!)

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Nik Samokhvalov @samokhvalov.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Tomas Vondra is one of #PostgreSQL hackers with strong focus on performance and query optimization. Enjoyed this session a lot 📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyMH... 🎙️ postgres.fm/episodes/per... It was inspired by this talk: "Where do performance cliffs come from?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzdA...

youtube.com

Performance cliffs | Postgres.FM 140 | #PostgreSQL #Postgres podcast

YouTube video by PostgresTV 💙💛

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 12/03/2025

While editing a podcast episode, I cringed twice whilst being confidently wrong about things. I need to work on that, or I need to stop criticising LLMs (or both!)

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 05/03/2025

After 6 years of hoping someone else would write this, I've finally succumbed to the little marketing devil on my shoulder and written about Postgres query plan visualization tools. It's hard to imagine someone more biased about any topic, but here goes: www.pgmustard.com/blog/postgre...

pgmustard.com

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 05/02/2025

It's incredibly common to see a Postgres query plan with all scans using indexes, and to think it's probably already optimal. I've written a new post for the pgMustard blog about why that often isn't the case, and some things you can look out for: www.pgmustard.com/blog/index-s...

pgmustard.com

Just because you’re getting an index scan, doesn't mean you can’t do better! - pgMustard

An issue I often see folks missing when reviewing query plans, is that they see that all of their scans involve indexes and they think that the query is likely already as fast (or efficient) as it can...

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 27/01/2025

I'm honoured to have been added to the PostgreSQL Contributors list, along with Nikolay Samokhvalov! www.postgresql.org/community/co... Thank you to everyone who makes Postgres what it is. I'm chuffed to be recognised as playing a small part in helping such a wonderful project ☺️✌️🐘

postgresql.org

PostgreSQL: Contributor Profiles

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 10/01/2025

We just published an episode of Postgres FM on pg_squeeze with the wonderfully humble Antonín Houska. If you’re currently managing bloat manually or with pg_repack, I highly recommend checking this out: postgres.fm/episodes/pg_...

postgres.fm

Postgres FM | pg_squeeze

Michael and Nikolay are joined by Antonín Houska to discuss pg_squeeze — what it is, how it started, some of its features, and hopes of getting the functionality into core. Here are some links to t...

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Reposted by Michael Christofides

Marco Slot @marcoslot.com · 09/01/2025

If you've become your company's designated Postgres expert, learning to navigate Postgres source code can be a useful skill, even if you're not a C programmer. For instance, the docs do not specify how the optimizer works, but there is a detailed readme in the source: github.com/postgres/pos...

github.com

postgres/src/backend/optimizer at master · postgres/postgres

Mirror of the official PostgreSQL GIT repository. Note that this is just a *mirror* - we don't work with pull requests on github. To contribute, please see https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Subm...

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 24/12/2024

One of my better subject lines 🎄

Subject line reads explain (analyze, tidings on)

The email isn’t visible, and the screenshot is from 5 years ago, with a watermark from Timehop.

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Reposted by Michael Christofides

Benoit Tigeot @benoittgt.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

"Enable BUFFERS with EXPLAIN ANALYZE by default" on #PostgreSQL 18. Yes ! git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=po...

git.postgresql.org

git.postgresql.org Git - postgresql.git/commit

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 12/12/2024

If you ever need to tidy up poor audio (especially speech, eg for podcasts) I highly recommend Auphonic: auphonic.com It can make echoey audio sound almost like a studio, and it can even remove things like sirens (when we have New York based guests), which blows my mind 👏

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Michael Christofides @michristofides.com · 07/12/2024

For anyone looking for a podcast app for iOS I can’t recommend Overcast highly enough. The rewrite of it recently scared me, but it’s somehow now even better than it was before, and it keeps adding useful features that I didn’t know I needed (like “Go back” when accidentally jumping 😍)

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